


Burned Pages

by ClassyFailure



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Implied Death, Implied Relationships, Memoir, from the diary of spinneret mindfang, its not really romantic?, kinda messed up relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1742783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClassyFailure/pseuds/ClassyFailure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You, Orphaner Dualscar, flip through the final moments of her journal. Recounting her final day under the vast expanse of Alternian sky, you remember that awful peasantblooded pet of hers. Maybe, you'd have saved her. She never bothered to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burned Pages

_“Today was unlike any of the others,"_

 

Your fingers, long and calloused, black claws curling at their ends, sprawl over the blue ink on the old paper. It has been sweeps since she passed by

.

_“...but in only one way. There were lowbloods and there were highbloods. Midbloods swept up the blood/the urine/the shit, poured the wine, and kept up their beautiful smiles. Midbloods are a keen and fearsome kind. Their eyes screamed murder, their lips and laughter showed happy dispositions in lax servitude._

_Amongst the lowbloods in the pen was my own sweet. His arms were shackled upper, elbow, and wrist. They have learned, maybe, that he is a force to be reckoned with. He did not seem scared, agitated, or antsy. His horns smacked those smaller, which brought highbloods in their seats much amusement. I could smell the rancid drunks in their purple robes from my hiding place in the tealblooded crowd. My sweet did not see me. He was not looking for me.”_

“My Sweet,” you mock, falsetto far off from hers, rolling your eyes and scratching at the words on the page. They tear, just slightly, and you rub it back into place.

 

_“But I saw him. His vest stripped, his scars, all of them so lovely and puckered golden like honey, amazed the lowbloods in the pens. He was nearing down into his twenties already, old and wise for someone his caste, but so young to me. So very shortly I held my sweet._

_The other rust- and piss- and shit- bloods were barely even ten. Wrigglers in a pen. Not even his followers. They were practically mewling for their lusus’s and a good hearty pap. My sweet was not unphased, but did not make a spectacle. While he did not smile, he spoke. His words, I imagined, were so soft and re-assuring. Just as every word he’d whisper to me, into my neck, in the slime, into the afternoon on any morning. What a fool. He gave these young grubs hope for a future while they were decapitated/sold/beaten/assaulted/sentenced before a crowd of gluttonous slobs.”_

You remember the night, too. It was hot and muggy, the wind was still over the ocean and the mosquitoes ate away at your servants, making them jump, spilling the wine. Seadweller blood was too cold for bugs, but the drinks were expensive and you didn’t appreciate the stains on your good clothes. Big, fat flies hovered over the pens of lower trolls, eating at the piss-soaked dirt below them. Filthy spectacle.

 

_“When they wrestled him out of the entrapment, like some animal with chains around his neck, I shifted, subconsciously, to the front of the crowd. All jewelry and fancy things aside. Just another blueblood observing the torture, placing bids on the cattle. He still did not see me, did not meet my gaze. There were angry, fresh gashes in his battle hardened skin. My fingers held fast to the hilt of my sword,  not that I could do anything to stop this. It was all in his hands, for now.”_

It was never in any of their hands. If lowbloods ever had tangible power, they’d probably choke on it. Or blow up buildings and squawk at it. You always inquired upon her taste for that one in particular, who craved things beyond his evolutionary capabilities. You tried and tried, tirelessly, to nail it into that thick skull of hers that it just wasn’t lowblood nature to be free. They were pushed out of the Mother Grub to pick up after their betters. They weren’t aggressive like you, or charming like you. None of them held a candle to your intelligence. She never fucking listened, did she? Always stopping you dead in your tracks, never outright standing up for any of them, but always against you. Somewhere in her pan, she did find them her superior, even if she spat at them the same as you. You knew she felt this way, you tried to go on schoolfeeding. If she was sweet on one, she was sweet on all. Clean and clear and cut. She had to stop suckerfishing up to them.

 

_“When he fought out of their grasps, the other, more braver captives, followed en suit. A small revolution was held before the eyes of bluebloods and seadwellers alike. Outright lowblood defiance. Some of the younger pupas had no idea there was more to the mind of a shitblood than to obey and die. They stood by their masters, these young court apprentices, little violet princes, and had their first taste of adulthood. I did not saunter into battle until the latest moment, fashionably, I must say, in the direction of him._

_His name was the sweetest thing on my lips. Chocolate. “Rufio,” I said, grabbing ahold of his shoulder, the hot sweat sticking me to him as any solvent. He turned and struck me. Clean across the face. I knocked him back, twice as hard, snarl on my lip. Had we greeted each other any other way, after months of cat-and-mouse, betrayal, and reunion, I would have thought that he’d fallen out with me. He was still mine. “Rufio,” I said again, tone colder. He grabbed an oncoming assaulter by the throatstem, crushing, and placed a kiss on my forehead, cold as stone._

_“Aranea, I don’t have time now. Come back later,” and he walked off. Into battle. Naturally, I followed him, digging my heels into the poor bastard he’d left to suffocate. We bickered, slaying and slaughtering as we went. He asked me if “_

 

Here, again, the page breaks. Unfinished, maybe. Or purposefully left unwritten. You wonder about her, in those last days, in that last battle for freedom. You wonder if she would have left him, for you, if you’d gone to her cell one last time and offered. You’d have saved her. She would still be alive.

 

_“We fought a long time, tearing through as many as we could. Soon our own numbers were sliced. Quartered, halved, demolished. He ascended quickly, removing the restraints on his beautiful, gold filament wings. They cast the most beautiful shadow as he rose, and I had extended my hand, like we always did, ready to flee with him._

_But he left me. My sweet left me. I was standing, dumbstruck, lost as a grub, as he flew off to whatever safety he could find. In that dusty ring of torture and blood, men pushed me to the ground. Yellow blood and dirt greeted me with a hard slap. They shackled me, disarmed me, and carried me off._

_Today, I wait. They have set up gallows for me again. Redglare, rest her vile soul, will not be there for me like the last time. The courtroom is not filled with rustbloods who are easy to control. Only the highest officers, all purple -one tyrian, to my honor, she is here as well- will be present to watch me hang._

_They are coming for me, in just minutes. I do not feel my life ticking by. I am not defeated. My sweet Rufio, with his veins of dirt and his heart of steel, will come for me. I will greet him by taking out his tooth with my fist. We will kiss. We will escape. I will live on.”_

Maybe it pains you that you were not in her final thoughts. You tear away this one section of her journal, save the others. If she lives on, it is only with you. Whatever descendant of her peasantblooded pet  that crawls from the depths of the caverns will be crushed under your boot. Maybe you will keep eye on hers, or kill it all the same. If you live to see that day.

 

In a long, ceremonious rip, you tear apart the last memoir of the Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. You kill Aranea’s final moments in the flames. You rid yourself of this nauseating mess, and lock the rest of it away. Maybe you will toss it in the bottom of the ocean, locked in some crummy safe.

 

Whatever the case, you poke the ashes of this last sickening moment, and count yourself lucky for your own preservation.

 

 


End file.
